THE PLANK DECEMBER 1, 2009
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I don’t oppose what Barack Obama plans to do in Afghanistan. I don’t know enough, and from what I know, I don’t have an alternative to propose. I would have preferred he find a way to achieve American objectives without escalating the war, but I agree with his objective of denying al Qaeda a home in Afghanistan through a Taliban victory, and I hope that his strategy will achieve it. Still, I have my doubts.
What bothers me is the echo of Vietnam in 1964 and 1965. Of course, there are differences--and Obama tried to cite them in his speech--but the similarities are disturbing:
-- Obama says that in Afghanistan, in contrast to Vietnam, we are not “facing a broad-based popular insurgency.” But if you look at South Vietnam in the early ‘60s, the National Liberation Front, or Viet Cong, did not have broad support. What it had was funding and organization and an ability to build support against what became a foreign invader. It seems that in the Pashtun South of Afghanistan, the Taliban is very similarly positioned.
-- In Vietnam, we were hampered by the lack of a government that enjoyed widespread support. In the absence of a popular government that could speak on behalf of the people, our intervention quickly degenerated into neo-colonialism, where the U.S. became, in effect, the government and the adversary of the insurgency. The same thing seems to be happening in Afghanistan. The government has, if anything, lost legitimacy as a result of the recent elections, and the current Afghan armed forces are probably inferior to those of South Vietnam in the mid-‘60s.
-- Obama says that in contrast with Vietnam, the U.S. is “joined by a broad coalition of 43 nations that recognizes the legitimacy of our action.” Again, a misleading comparison. During the Vietnam war, the U.S. called the shots but it enjoyed very active military support from other countries in the Pacific region, including Australia, South Korea, Thailand, and New Zealand. South Korea lost thousands of soldiers in the war. I don’t know if there were 43 countries who recognized “the legitimacy of our action,” but I would suspect there may have been. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that U.S. was pretty much on its own militarily in an Asian country that had long suffered from Western, and then Japanese, colonialism. Its intervention could be cast as a continuation of Western colonialism.
In Afghanistan, the U.S. is getting some support for Britain and some other NATO countries, but it is calling the shots. And the countries that are actively supporting the U.S. were active participants in Western colonialism. When the U.S. first went into Afghanistan after September 11, it enjoyed the support of other neighboring Muslim countries, including Iran, as well as Russia. Currently, America’s adversaries could portray its intervention as another attempt by the West to impose its will on a Muslim country.
How important are these similarities? In Vietnam, America’s problems were ultimately political. As long as Vietnam’s Communists could portray the United States forces as colonial interlopers, the U.S. couldn’t win. Its support was bound to erode, even after scoring military victories. The U.S. could have a similar problem in Afghanistan.
Obama understands this problem. He said repeatedly that the U.S. had no designs on Afghanistan. “We have no interest in occupying your country,” he declared. I believe him, but the question is whether the Afghan people--faced with what will near 200,000 American military and civilian forces--will do so.
Obama also made clear what his commanders and what other supporters of the war have not: that the U.S. cannot hope to win in Afghanistan by clearly defeating the Taliban the way, say, American armies defeated the Iraqi armies during the first Gulf War. Instead, he spoke of America’s goal as “breaking the momentum” of the Taliban.
Breaking momentum is consistent with a strategy aimed at achieving a stalemate and securing an agreement through negotiations that would at the least prevent the return of al Qaeda. But if the Afghan people don’t acquire a government capable of conducting negotiations with the Taliban, then Obama is going to have trouble keeping his promise to begin withdrawing American forces in 2011.
If the U.S. has not been able by then to encourage the creation of a popular government in Kabul, then Obama will be faced with the same kind of choice that Richard Nixon faced in 1973. He can agree to withdraw on the promise of peace and reconciliation, while recognizing that as soon as the last American leaves Afghanistan, the Taliban will begin taking over from the weak pro-American government. Or he can go back to the American people and request more troops and more time. And good luck with that.
In other words, I don’t see the end game in Obama’s strategy. As it stands, it looks like a choice between remaining in Afghanistan indefinitely and perhaps escalating again or withdrawing and accepting the failure to achieve our objective. I hope things don’t come to that, but I fear they will.
More on Obama's Afghanistan Speech:
"A Lonely Kind Of Courage," by Elizabeth D. Samet
"Obama's Inconsistencies," by Richard Just
"More On Obama's Inconsistencies," by John B. Judis
"How Obama's Surge Is Like Bush's," by Steven Metz
"Obama Sticks To His Guns," by Michael Crowley
"Obama's Other Front: The Hill," by Lydia DePillis and Jesse Zwick
"The Day After: A Hollow Withdrawal Pledge Comes Into Focus," by Michael Crowley
7 comments
All well and good, but the MAIN difference between Afghanistan and Vietnam (among many) is that we have vital national interests in the former. Our superb all-volunteer military has a crucial mission in Afghanistan, whereas our increasingly hapless conscript army in Vietnam knew perfectly well that we did not.
- Robert Powell
December 2, 2009 at 4:02am
The speech was mostly a set of semi-valid cliches artfully strung together. So consider the following in response: 100-200 Al Queda tie down 100,000 of our best active-duty troops. That'll really shock and awe the rest of the bad guys!!! What really vital interest do we have in Afghanistan that we don't have in Pakistan, ....... Iraq,.... Yemen, .....Somalia, .... Iran.......and... (fill in the blanks..). The domino theory, once again?? Vietnam is a country that outside powers have controlled for long periods of time. Not so Afghanistan (Google: Alexander the Great, Britain, Russia, etc). What did staying in Vietnam an extra 4-6 years after putting in dramatically more troops before the TET offensive (1967) gain us?? . LBJ's presidential greatness on Civil Rights and Medicare was largely destroyed by his miscalculation on Vietnam and those that do not properly learn the lessons of history are often doomed to repeat them. Guns AND butter were more easily paid for in better economic times in the late '60s than now. More and more Americans on the home front understand the not-so-hidden meaning of the lyrics "We're neck deep in the Big Muddy (now the Big Sandy?), and the Big Fool says to push on". I'd make a major bet that the totality of the above cliches are nearer reality today and two years hence than those delivered by BO.
- gdbittner
December 2, 2009 at 7:17am
Apropos Robert Powell's comment, Judis might add another similarity: that the "national security establishment," both in the 60s with respect to Vietnam, and in the 2000s, with respect to Afghanistan, BELIEVED we had a vital national security interest justifying the military mission. So, were they all wrong then, but right now? I don't know, but the 9/11 attacks don't do much to answer the question. They prove that there are lower-level security issues in having a rogue state hosting al Qaeda, but they don't tell us whether the only or best way to prevent these from being a true national security threat is the comprehensive counter-insurgency and nation-building approach Obama endorses. (I know, no one likes to be told that 9/11 was not a grave national security threat, but it wasn't. It was tragic for multiple thousands of people, and moderately expensive for us, but it was also the very most that al Qaeda could accomplish, used techniques easily thwarted, and in the end did not threaten sustained damage to the US people, infrastructure, or economy.) On the other hand, another shadow of that Vietnam-era national security argument might in fact be most interesting of all in these comparisons: the domino theory. A resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan COULD beget deep trouble in Pakistan, and with Pakistani nukes at risk, that would almost certainly drag the US, India and others into a very dangerous wider conflict in South Asia. Of all the things said and unsaid about persevering in Afghanistan, this, to me, is the most compelling. We can prevent al Qaeda from being a serious threat to US national security (as compared to a persistent low-level threat, which they probably will be regardless of whether the Taliban controls Afghanistan or not). Militarily, we could have hamstrung them, in the late 90s far short of full scale invasion and commitment to extended nation-building. A Taliban-al Qaeda in possession of operational nukes is quite another story.
- sdemuth
December 2, 2009 at 7:36am
gd- To be fair, it's not the 100-200 AQs who tie down our forces in Afghanistan, it's the Taliban fighters. As for the vital national interest, it's Pakistan. If Afghanistan falls to the Taliban, Pakistan (which is already on very shaky ground) will likely be next, and quickly. Yes, AQ can relocate to Yemen or Somalia or wherever, and they will (or have). But those countries aren't located next to nuclear-armed states fighting an emboldened radical Islamic insurgency.
- ratnerstar
December 2, 2009 at 10:54am
Bob, not wanting to sound like I'm quibbling, but haven't you been a strong proponent of the idea that we had vital national interests in Iraq and NOT Afghanistan? I understood this to be the basis of your criticism of Obama's focus on Afghanistan over Iraq.
- Nari224
December 2, 2009 at 10:55am
There's no question in my mind that the stakes in Iraq were considerably higher than in Afghanistan. But that doesn't mean we don't have higher stakes in Afghanistan than we did in Vietnam, as concisely pointed out above by Ratnerstar. The people who thought Vietnam was important didn't know anything about the place. If the idea was to prevent Chinese communist expansion as was often stated, we should have been supporting the Viet Cong. Even the more doctrinaire communists in the NVA wasted no time fighting a border war with the Chinese as soon as we pulled out.
- Robert Powell
December 2, 2009 at 11:29am
As it stands, it looks like a choice between remaining in Afghanistan indefinitely If we could secure Kabul and the big cities, build them up into something that moderately resembles modernity, and essentially stop the cave dwellers from blowing them up, why can't we stay there indefinitely. Everyone likes to pretend this phase of Muslim primitivism will last forever, it won't, we just have to last long enough until it burns itself out. When these people see an ever more prosperous India and China, and a Kabul that shares many of the trappings of modernity, goat meat, mud huts, and never ending war and poverty is going to lose its appeal. People accuse Obama of kicking the can down the road, but f yeah, that is the whole point. And Bob is right of course, if the Taliban didn't allow Al Qaeda to have free rein they would still be in power and nobody would care.
- blackton
December 2, 2009 at 11:33am